Blog statistics down since Canterbury mosque attacks

The number of page views here varies over time, usually with explainable changes. Up leading up to and following elections and around significant news events. Down at Christmas and when I am on holiday or busier than normal on other things.

A significant I have noticed is that after a jump in page views associated with the Christchurch mosque attacks ion 15 March this year, page views have settled back to be running 20-25% fewer than they had been prior to that.

Weekly page views over the last six months:

The bump two weeks ago was when the book Whale Oil was launched – posts about Whale Oil have always tended to be popular, but page views have been running consistently lower since March.

I can only guess why this has happened, but I suspect it is something that Google has changed in their search algorithms.

Views referred by ‘search engines’ (primarily Google) are a significant proportion of traffic.

This drop in page views appears to be not just here. Alexa isn’t proof of numbers, but it suggests drops in traffic at Kiwiblog, The Standard and The Daily Blog since about mid-March as well.

So that adds weight to a factor other than content here.

It’s difficult to judge traffic at Whale Oil, because they switched domains last month (from whaleoil.co.nz to whaleoil.net.nz) makes it hard to judge traffic trends there, but traffic numbers have long been suspect there, and there was an unexplained huge jump in traffic there last September.

They still claim “Whaleoil is the fastest-growing media organisation in New Zealand” which appears to be nonsense, the claim is unchanged for a number of years but other indications are that numbers are down there. Comment numbers have certainly dropped significantly, especially since last October when Cameron Slater had what appears to be a mild stroke and since he filed for bankruptcy in February, an since the company running the blog went into liquidation.

Slater and Whale Oil suffered a major hit in credibility when the book Dirty Politics was launched in 2014 and after a number of legal blows and revelations, particularly the defamation judgment of Matt Blomfield (October 2018) and the launch of the book Whale Oil last month. Despite rearranging ownership I suspect Whale Oil is facing a significant issue with the liquidation.

But WO aside, it seems that the major blogs have dropped page views since March when the Christchurch massacres occurred, as has Your NZ (while this is of interest it doesn’t bother me, I’m not driven by numbers or popularity).

20 Comments

David

Its not a very busy government and the PM has a home life she has to put much time into so there isnt really a lot going on.
Turns out Trump didnt collude with the Russians, thank you yes I was right all along and he had a good trip to the UK that even had CNN acknowledging it. Brexit is groundhog day, the Danes just voted in a left wing anti immigration party, Austria lost its popular right wing president, Merkels heir apparent is looking wobbly, Putin is still Putin so a bit going on but now Trump is the leader of the free world we live in peaceful prosperous times with not a lot to get concerned about.

Duker

“At a July 27, 2016, campaign rally, Mr. Trump said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” — referring to Clinton emails reportedly stored on a personal server. “Within approximately five hours” of Mr. Trump’s remarks, according to the Mueller report, Russian military intelligence began a cyberattack against “Clinton’s personal office.” – Mueller (VOLUME I, PP. 49, 62-63)
Why would Trump say that unless he knew they were doing so?

direct Collusion
“Throughout his time as the Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort stayed in touch with a Russian man named Konstantin Kilimnik, whom, according to the Mueller report, “the F.B.I. assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence.” Mr. Gates, Mr. Manafort’s deputy, believed Mr. Kilimnik to be a “spy.” — a view, the report says, that he shared with Mr. Manafort.
Mueller (VOLUME I, PP. 130-131, 140)

Its clear Russia interferred in the Election with the Goal of Supporting Trump , and Trump with meetings etc sought to benefit from what they were doing.
Thats Collusion

I dont think Russian interference had as much influence on the result as they think, but the Russian information helped Trump with his ‘Crooked Hilary’ messaging. Thats no coincidence

Alan Wilkinson

As at July 27 2016 everyone with an interest in US news knew that the Russians had the Democrats’ emails and Trump’s remark was obviously a provocative joke baiting the Democrats to everyone with more than half a brain and less than full on Lefty bias.

Also anyone with more than half a brain would know if Trump wanted to communicate secretly with the Russians he wouldn’t do it in a campaign speech. Take that bit of the Mueller report with a very large pinch of Democratic salt.

Duker

It was wikileaks who released them and they denied it had anything to do with Russia

It wasnt till 2018 that real story was out
ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html?noredirect=on

As for What Trump says at anytime, any one with half a brain wonders about what he says. he knew he couldnt say in back channels something he could say in plain sight.
In fact Mueller details his campaign comittee contacted other people to go ‘after Clintons lost emails

“After his July 27 comment, the report states, Mr. Trump “asked individuals affiliated with his campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails” — including Michael Flynn.
Mr. Flynn, in turn, reached out to a Republican Senate staffer and a party operative who worked separately to obtain the emails”- Mueller (VOLUME I, PP. 49, 62-63)

There was another occasion when Trump teased more information to come’ alluding to the email leaks.

David

Duker I think you and CNN are the only ones left who think Trump colluded with Putin. If the depth of that thinking is a throw away line at a rally said in public in front of TV cameras is your burden of proof laced with a tease that there could be more emails its an absurdly low bar.

Duker

Throw away lines can get people in jail if there is other evidence of crimes.
What other President has ever made a comment inviting a foreign Power to work against his opponent !
And they took it up – was that because they knew it was a ‘throw away’

How many times would you excuse Obama for ‘throw away lines’ Remember his Syria line in the sand throw away line ? hahaha

Its only a few sentences from Muellers 400 pages , much of its blacked out.

Alan Wilkinson

In May 2016, two months before Trump’s joke, Crowdstrike had identified the Russians as being behind the hack. Mueller’s implication is ridiculous. The Russians probably wanted Clinton gone but collusion with Trump is crap.

Blazer

David

Well what concerns you ? North Korea have stopped lobbing long rang missiles, Iran is being contained somewhat, Syria seems all over, ISIS no longer has a caliphate, the world economy is growing pretty well as reflected in the markets.
Its not perfect but these are pretty great times to be alive

PDB

The National opposition leader (and as a result the party) is uninspiring & the govt continues to fall to pieces with only Ardern’s personal popularity holding their polling up. The mosque attack only further highlighted this disparity between Ardern’s public face/ persona and the inept govt/ her leadership of it. The flagship policies of the various govt partners like introducing a CGT, major reductions in immigration, first year free students, the Shane Jones slush fund & Kiwibuild all failures as they now try to continue to run the country as ‘National-lite’ albeit with increased spending & less means of measuring how successful that spending actually is.

The bulk of the left wing are just happy enough to be in govt regardless of the fact they actually aren’t doing a lot to progress their causes & some key social issues like health outcomes & ‘homelessness’ have in fact worsened since they became govt. The right see very little being implemented by this govt so are largely continuing on ‘business as usual’ whilst they also await National changing their leader which should happen sooner rather than later.

The political blogs have become a bit stale as a direct cause of this ‘dead patch’ in the political cycle. Giving Bridges a good ole kicking and/or highlighting yet another govt failure is getting boring so frequent it has become & how easy those targets are to hit. Personally I probably only check this site out once, maybe twice a week max when I’d have been considered a daily contributor the last few years.

Blazer

PDB

Some things never change Blazer – I don’t know how you and Al argue the same old arguments each week….put yourself in the “happy enough to be in govt even though doing nothing” brigade along with a quite a few…others.